Author David E. Dresner shares with Female First why his experiences of teaching teenagers inspired him to create an empowering fiction for young adult readers.
The Blighted Fortress
In my book series, ‘The Allies of Theo’, the two central protagonists are a seventeen-year-old boy, Traveler, and a seventeen-year old girl, Glenda. While the storyline builds on threats against a benevolent god character from a cosmic foe, the story is in many ways a study of two highly capable teens taking the measure of the other. They fascinate each other while annoying each other. Each wants to outdo the other. Ultimately, they come to respect their interdependency.
There are a zillion articles and books on contemporary teen development. They focus on behaviour, angst, peer acceptance, family culture, the impact of technology. It’s a long list! One major focus deals with achievement and attitude ‘gaps’ between girls and boys particularly in science and maths. As a recent school tutor specialising in maths, algebra in particular, I observed these ‘gaps’ as I interacted with the students.
My professional background was as a consulting mathematician in the United States and ultimately as CEO for a national firm of consulting mathematicians. My classroom perspectives came mainly from dealing with students’ academic focus but also on their emerging interpersonal skills, notably informal classroom leadership. Leadership is essential in business.
Following some of the changes I observed between my generation’s classroom and the present day, there appeared to be a lot of good news, particularly for girls.
Heraclitus the Greek philosopher and educator famously said in 500 BC, ‘Everything changes but change itself.’ I’ve heard this expressed as, ‘Everything changes but nothing changes.’ The trick is to distinguish between what’s real change and what’s illusionary change.
Without a DeLorean time machine, I found an older me back in a rural school doing the required student teaching for licensure. I expected my first day to be mostly meet and greet, ergo easy peasy. Wrong. A harried teacher met me in a hallway, and gave me my day’s assignment. I was instructed to go to the library and administer a series of computerised maths tests all day. There was no time to chit chat. She headed down the hallway on another early morning mission.
Standing in the hallway trying to get my bearings, students with cell phones were weaving around me. I quickly got out of their way and eventually found the library. Alone in the library I stood beside a long table filled with testing computers, then the first class rolled in. They all took seats and proceeded to stare at me. I realised they had no idea who I was, so I had to introduce myself. One boy asked if I was a substitute teacher and I explained I would be teaching the spring semester of maths. The students gave me appraising looks. Clearly they hoped I was a sub. Subs were also red meat in my day. The students dismissed me to begin their computer testing. I felt as useful as a door knob on a student locker.
The computer-based exam was scheduled to last for a full class, an hour. After less than half an hour six boys had hit the ‘end’ key and retired to a back part of the library. Once out of sight they rolled around on bean bag seats.
I saw that all the girls were quiet and focused on the test and I wished I had more of them. The remaining seated boys were now actively twitching and poking at each other, they wanted to join the bean bag fun. I mustered my best ‘stay put’ look then proceeded to the back to rein in the bean bag babies. Approaching the lions I told them to pull up chairs. They studied me, was I red meat? I have long hair, wear a leather vest and appear fit, so they decided to go with it for the moment. We sat in a small circle and I immediately asked, ‘What do you guys know about the Spartans?’ Six blank faces was the answer. One boy ventured they were a football team.
I proceeded to describe how Spartan boys starting at age seven went into focused training for future battles. I explained Spartan training started by sitting still, listening, and then following orders. I spun a few Spartan war stories including Thermopylae. The boys were captivated and stayed quiet, one point for me.
I was exhausted when I got home. What had I signed up for? I stayed the course and after completing the student teaching semester I did a year tutoring maths in another rural school. Here’s what I saw.
Starting on day one I had a desk in the maths classroom. I either worked at the desk or took small groups to the library. In this tutoring role I got to observe classroom behaviour changes. The teacher had to balance content presentation with demanding classroom control. Control was significantly harder than in my time. Students talked a lot, every student was a lawyer with a comeback retort.
One amusing difference is the backpack. So much is stuffed in there students frequently can’t find what’s needed. I listened many times as a student claimed to have handed in homework which the teacher says was never received. A battle of lawyering ‘did’ vs ‘did not’ ensued. Hands would finally go into backpacks and miraculously find the work stuffed in there.
A huge change was the use of hand calculators. Many students reach for them regardless of the problem. Numbers were elusive animals that avoided logic traps. The machine frequently gave silly answers that many students unquestioningly accepted as correct. Logic disappeared as students accepted that the bakery really could sell a cake for ten thousand dollars.
Many students had lost their recall of the multiplication tables. Thank you again, Mr Calculator. The price for forgetting came due when they had to factor an equation. A facility with multiplication made factoring easy for some. For the machine dependent student, Mr Calculator chuckled as it generated a host of possible coefficient fits.
Another ubiquitous machine is the cell phone. This device permitted quick unfiltered social interaction. It impersonally sends nasty comments on weight, looks, and other critical messages that can devastate a teen. It potentially stunts the natural social development that would happen in my time with face to face encounters.
Classroom behaviour was old and new at the same time. Boy behaviour was similar to my middle school years. As the boys entered the classroom it was Dodge City with cowboys riding in. By comparison most girls entered projecting a mature composed presence. The girls did talk a lot coming in but without six guns blazing.
In my time we used maths books exclusively, now textbooks seemed passé. I watched as students built their own textbooks from teacher lectures. ‘How inefficient,’ I thought.
Building their book required using glue sticks. When the teacher was preoccupied the boys would do a quick hand flick upward. Properly projected, the glue stick would fly to the ceiling and find a permanent home. In my time there were no glue sticks, we used sharpened pencils with the same result. There was identical boy behaviour many generations apart.
Content mastery seemed the same as in my time, algebra is still algebra. The notable difference was the equal number of girls to boys. In my generation I literally had no girls in advanced algebra. Now the girls were not only there, they were frequently among the strongest students.
Many advanced girls offered informal classroom tutoring and boys frequently came to them for help. Many teen boys are shy around girls, I know I was. I observed how the girls seemed to instinctively provide help without embarrassing the boys. Naturally some advanced boys still offered help but now there were more options.
Over the year I watched an ongoing increase in the social interactions from girls who were inclined to be reserved. It was a mutual win-win for boys and girls both academically and socially.
A potential future benefit to girls in giving informal classroom help would be preparing them to assume career leadership roles. Effective leadership requires mixing content knowledge with acceptable social interfacing. Many girls were developing that skill.
Overall I felt the girls were advancing more than the boys during this middle school year. Many boys have a natural need to be kinetic and are made to sit still. While girls enjoy physical activity they appeared to better manage their seat time focus.
Old Heraclitus was both right and wrong. Real change is coming fast at all of us, young and older. Changes frequently arrive like a technology express train that shakes the classroom and later the workplace. Despite the technology train, much of our human development is unchanged regardless of new tools.
So where are the female role models for girls in maths and science today? My observations say they are here in abundance right now. They are arriving in the workplace, not only competitive in maths and science, but as leaders. This change is real and ongoing.
The Blighted Fortress by David E. Dresner published by Clink Street, RRP £11.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook is out now.